Something darted through the shadows near us, a large shape, but it was gone when I looked. My pulse picked up. “That was probably very weird for you. Back there.”
Teo thought about it and nodded a little. “Yeah, but I’ve seen a lot of strange shit.”
“I’m glad you helped us. Thank you.”
“It helped everybody, right?”
“Yes.” I wondered if he had experienced the same things that I had in the circle. I wanted to ask, but he was crossing to the other side of the road where a young shirtless guy sat hunched and rocking himself, his face in his hands.
I followed and we crouched beside him, encouraging him to look at us. He had dirt smudges all over him and some small scratches and abrasions--nothing too serious. There were bits of gravel stuck to one of his forearms. When he lifted his face, his eyes were bleary and red but present. He insisted he was okay, just very confused and turned around. “Bad trip,” he mumbled. “I lost my camp.”
I doubted that, but I thought he’d be all right after some sleep. We got him to describe his camp well enough for us to guide him to it. He vanished into a small tent without another word to us, and the sound of him zipping the flap shut told us our help was no longer desired.
The field was mostly empty when we reached it. There were a couple of volunteer medics beside the golf cart we’d seen, tending to what I hoped was a merely-unconscious person. A few off-duty rangers patrolled, identifiable by the purpose in their steps and the radios they talked into. The fire had burned down to embers, and the fire tenders were taking turns raking them out and dousing them with water from the trough.
A chilly breeze whipped through the open air. I could see the occasional person wandering around the edges of the field, but the party was over--and so was the danger. Everything had the feeling of a night cut short. I felt a sudden pang of guilt. If we could’ve stopped Murmur early enough, there would have been people out here dancing, playing, warming themselves by the remnants of the fire, until the break of dawn.
There wasn’t anything in the field that the rangers and medics didn’t seem to have under control, so we made our way to the pavilion. It, too, was mostly empty. One person lay in the hammock stretched between two support beams, but seemed to be asleep and peaceful. A couple of people in a far corner huddled together over a shared bottle of whiskey. Near the edge of the space, a few of the drummers kept watch over a cluster of instruments as they maneuvered large djembe drums into brightly-colored zippered bags.
“Quiet out here,” I remarked to one of them, a guy with a scraggly beard clinging to his chin and a bandanna tied over his dreds.
“About time.” He shook his head. “You see what went down tonight?”
I shrugged, careful not to look at Teo. “We were in the back forty all night.”
“Craziness. The fire started to spread at one point, I guess, and then a bunch of people went nuts. I heard there was a camp that came in to the burn tonight to do stuff to cause trouble, but I don’t know what. And a lot of people freaked out. I drummed through most of it, so I don’t know what went down. All’s I know is, maybe half an hour ago, everything broke up real sudden. It was weird. The whole night was just weird.”
I couldn’t help myself. “That’s freaky. What do you think was going on? You hear anything?”
“Naw.” He stood and shouldered the drum bag. “People got drunker than usual? Or it was one of those mob things, you know how when enough people get out of control, it affects everybody? Maybe that. I don’t know. I just know I’m ready for bed.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I murmured, and Teo and I drifted away. We searched the Goblin Market and found one more person passed out under a table full of dollar store toys, and managed to rouse her and hand her off to the medics to check out. As we crossed the field with her, a fat wet drop splattered on my cheek.
“Rain.” Teo looked up and I did too. Sure enough, the wind was blowing steadily now, shaking the trees and carrying that unmistakable dusty wet smell of petrichor off of the baked earth. More drops hit my upturned face.
“I think we’re clear here,” I said when we’d dropped off our charge. “Let’s go back to the showers and meet up with the others.”
“If you don’t need nothing else, I’m gonna go to bed.”
I glanced at him. He did look as tired as I felt, but his gaze had gone inward to a place I couldn’t follow. “Are you okay?”
He nodded. The rain was starting to fall in earnest. “Just need sleep.”
“Thank you, Teo,” I said. “For everything.” He nodded again and half shrugged it off. Impulse struck me and I wrapped my arms around him in a hug. He was taut and startled at first, but then returned the embrace. For a long moment we stood like that, with the rain falling into our hair, arms tight around each other as though we could squeeze out everything awful we’d seen all night.
He lowered his head and let it rest on my shoulder. I closed my eyes and took the first deep, pure breath I’d had in hours. Slowly we released the hug and stepped back, and I saw him blink tears out of his eyes.
“Good night.” He turned his face away and started towards his camp. In my periphery I saw a sudden movement in the shadows near him. I scooped up my courage and followed, stepping off the road into the grass and trying to see what was there and whether it was something to worry about.
I caught hints of movement twice more as I prowled behind Teo. Whatever it was, it was tracking him. My gut tightened as I ducked around tents and chairs and burn barrels. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain came down harder. The grass was getting slick under my feet.
I looked up and realized I’d lost Teo. Whatever was causing the movement, I couldn’t see it and I might have lost its trail. I searched the area for another minute, frustrated, but the rain was making it hard to see anything and I was getting cold again. I stood there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. I called Teo’s name a few times and got no response.
The reality was that I was alone, unarmed, drenched, and far from at my best. The rain and wind were going to make searching hard. I felt ungrateful and I was worried, but I gave up and headed back toward the showers, hoping that whatever I’d seen was nothing to worry about. I reasoned that if it was something that wanted to attack, it’d had plenty of chances to do it already.
The rest of my crew was waiting at the showers when I got there. “Come on,” said Dionne. “This is our sign that it’s time to get some rest. Anyone else out there still got something in them, which I doubt, the rain’s going to knock it out of them just as well as we could.”
Sweeter words had never been spoken.
“Come camp with us.” Tamar looped a gentle arm around my waist. “You don’t want to be alone in your tent tonight.”
I shivered. “You got that right.”
We were soaked by the time we got back to Free Radicals. “Over here.” Tamar guided us all toward a large army tent.
I hadn’t been inside this particular structure yet, and discovered that it was another common area for the camp. It was large enough that the grass floor, which was mostly covered in rugs and mats, was safe from the rain. There were a couple of card tables set up, but also a few cots around the edges and even a wooden futon.
Tamar, Joe, and Cherry braved the rain again to ferry in supplies in big trash bags. Blankets, pillows, towels, dry clothes, snacks, jugs of water. None of it was fancy, but to me it was like watching a sultan’s attendants bearing litters heaped with treasure.
We dried off wearily, tossing wet dirty clothes into a messy heap. Vivi was too weak to change clothes without help. We tended each other’s injuries and made up beds; it went without saying that all of us were staying under the same roof tonight. My leg looked ugly, with deep scratches and gouges, and Sara cleaned it while I clenched fists and teeth against the pain. “Get this looked at tomorrow, okay?” S
he looked up at me with concern. “I don’t think it’s going to need more than bandages, but you’re going to want to keep checking for infection.”
It felt so comforting to have gauze pads taped over it, so unbearably good to feel my skin hugged by someone’s warm dry track pants and baggy old t-shirt. When Joe handed me a plate of cold chicken strips and baby carrots and pretzels, I took one bite and couldn’t swallow it past the sudden tightness in my throat. I bowed my head, embarrassed by the tears that flooded my eyes and the aftershocks of fear and panic that curled my mouth into a grimace. I covered my eyes with one hand as I struggled not to sob, but I shook with the effort of holding it in.
They were all there. First it was Joe, setting my plate down and drawing my head to his shoulder with a soothing sound, and then Sara, scooting up along my legs to take my hand; then Cherry, curling up on my other side and snuggling against me, and then I was aware of all of us crowded in together, everyone holding on to each other, all of them offering me tenderness so exquisite that I gave in to the grief and relief and exhaustion and simply cried. I heard other sniffles and gasps too; I wasn’t alone.
“We did good tonight.” Dionne’s voice was soft, reassuring. “We did an impossible thing. Us against more than we should’ve been able to handle. We kept a lot of people from getting hurt. It took a whole lot out of us, okay? So let’s eat, and sleep. Tomorrow we go out and see what things look like. Not right now. Right now, we just take it easy.”
It was several more minutes before we pulled apart. We stayed in our little cluster, anchoring each other in this quiet moment, warming each other, comforting each other. When we did move, there was a weary silence over us all, as we settled in our spots and ate with a combination of mechanical necessity and ravenousness.
I looked over at Vivi. Her face was her own for now, and her baggy clothes hid much of her gauntness. She looked pensive and vulnerable with her eyes so huge in her face. Tomorrow, we had to find out if our fae allies had any solutions for her. Tomorrow, I had to figure out how to contend with Murmur before he hurt anyone else here. Tomorrow we’d learn if he had succeeded at claiming any souls.
Tomorrow.
Not now.
I got to sleep on one of the cots. Its mattress was thin, but it was a mattress. The pillow cradled my head. I had a rough cotton Mexican blanket that just covered me, but its weight was soothing. It was the most comfortable thing I’d slept on since New Orleans. That thought passed through my mind as I felt sleep pull at my eyelids and I snuggled down, surrendering to exhaustion at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I woke in near-darkness with pain slicing through my abdomen. I jerked awake and froze, holding my breath as I scanned for signs of the threat.
Someone snored, loudly.
The ache stabbed again and I relaxed. I’d just been sleeping so deeply that my need to pee hadn’t woken me until it got painful. Mystery, solved.
Of course, now I was awake and acutely aware that I needed to trek out to the porta-johns, and it was absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to disturb anyone else to get them to go with me, but I was afraid of going out by myself. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it was clear that wasn’t happening. The big obstacle, though, was just forcing myself to throw off the blanket. I winced as cold air rushed into my little cocoon.
Peering out the tent flaps, I saw that it wasn’t dark anymore. It was that sickly gray pre-dawn light that comes after a rain, leaving everything dim and washed out. Still, it was dark enough to make me uneasy, and the camp was silent. I supposed that the rain had chased even the most hard-core DJs into their tents.
With the little extra light, I could see traces of the night’s chaos here and there as I walked--bits of trash, a broken chair, fallen glow sticks shining feebly through the grass. I was still jumpy, but at least there was a feeling of presence here, a sense that people were around me, sleeping.
I started to nod off right there on the toilet seat. I shook myself awake and braced for the walk back, which felt unbearable and long and cold and hard. Everything ached and I didn’t want to take another step. I wished I’d just used the grass outside the tent.
Someone was standing outside the line of johns when I emerged. It took me a moment to realize that it was Charlie.
I sucked in a quick breath and skipped a couple of steps to one side before I could remind myself not to be afraid. Like the spirit who’d appeared in my living room on my last night in New Orleans, he looked real enough. But unlike the last time I’d seen him, crowded in with other souls in that pit in the decaying realm, the confusion and misery were gone from his face. He looked calm and thoughtful.
“Hi, Charlie.” I glanced around to see if Murmur was lurking, waiting to take back what he’d lost. I saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Why are you here?”
He frowned, furrowing his brow. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but no sound emerged, and he shimmered and wavered around the edges.
“You can’t speak to me, can you?” I said, and he shook his head, his face saddened. I understood. It’s an effort for a spirit to become visible, and sometimes that’s as much as they can do. “Okay. You’re here for a reason. What can you do to tell me what it is?”
He bowed his head in thought. Then he brightened. He gestured, and I realized it was sign language.
“I don’t know ASL, Charlie,” I said with regret.
He repeated the gestures. I shook my head, and he shook his more emphatically and pointed at my hands, then made the signs again, but slower. His mouth moved too, as though he were speaking, but I couldn’t tell what words his lips shaped. He pointed at me again and repeated the signs, even slower. His image shimmered again; he was running out of strength. Suddenly I got what he wanted, and imitated the gestures. He brightened and nodded and did the sequence again, giving me time to repeat each one after him.
Then he looked past me and pointed out into the distance, toward the center of camp. I looked over my shoulder, but nothing stuck out. I turned back and he held up his hands to forestall my questions, pointed again, and made a tiered shape with his hands. This time I got it. “The temple? That building over there?” I could see its outline in the morning haze, and I shivered, remembering my encounter there last night.
Charlie was nodding again. He repeated the signs one more time, then pointed to the temple. I didn’t know how they’d go together, but I was sure I could find out.
He was fading and reappearing. There wasn’t much time. “Charlie, can you tell me something? Just yes or no. When you were--in his realm--could you see other souls there with you?”
He nodded. It cost him effort.
“Okay. Okay. Real fast--was there a girl there? A teenage girl with green eyes like mine, a girl named Suzanne?” My heart fluttered.
He thought about it. He was fading again. He turned up his hands and shook his head, lifting his shoulders.
That old ache, of helplessness, of missing my best friend. I swallowed it, because I sensed I had only moments to help him move on. My skills were meager, but I pulled something out of the recesses of all I’d read sometime in the past. “Thank you for coming to see me, Charlie. You can move on from this world now. It’s okay. You’re free. If you want to see your grandfather, I think he’ll be waiting for you. You won’t be forgotten, okay? I promise. So wherever you’re supposed to go now, you can head that way. It’s all right to let go.”
He gave me a sweet, sad little smile, laid his hand on his heart, and turned to walk away. As he moved, the space before him radiated a soft glow and his image flickered and came apart in tiny bits that sparkled and faded into the dawn.
Grief, sudden and unexpected, flooded me and caught in my throat; but it was a grief laced with weary relief. I had done what was in my power for him and the uncertainty was over. I could let go too.
I
was still tired as I walked back to Free Radicals, but less sleepy with each step. I had adjusted to the cold and it felt refreshing, almost nice. I’d been taking shallow little breaths, so I stretched my achy arms overhead and sucked in a big lungful of air, letting it out in a whoosh and relaxing a little as I did. I took a broader look around myself. In the misty gray air, the domes of tents looked like the smooth backs of animals nestled down in sleep. Here and there, I caught a twinkle or glow where someone had forgotten to turn off a lantern or string of lights. A light breeze stirred the tall grasses past the camping areas on my right, softly rustling. Shade structures and common areas were lonely in their emptiness, but revealed hints of the stories that had played out in them, in the shuffle of chairs or cushions, in abandoned cups, empty bottles, fire pits full of ash.
It felt peaceful.
A motor rumbled behind me, and a golf cart came up alongside me. Mr. Frosty tipped his ranger’s hat. “Morning!”
“Hey there.” I stopped and so did he. I waited for him to give me some cue before I said anything else.
He leaned a beefy arm over the back of the seat and took in the camp. “Heard you did an overnight the other night. Good thing it wasn’t last night. Things got nuts. You okay?”
“Fine. Guess I missed all the excitement. I hope no one got hurt?”
“We were lucky.” He huffed out a breath. “Few people got banged up, but so far nothing too bad. It’s going to be a hell of a day today cleaning up.” His bright blue eyes fixed on me. “Be a great time for you to put in your second shift, since you’re up and functional.”
“Um.” My mind raced. “I guess so? I’m, uh, I’m on breakfast duty so I’ll have to swing by the sign-ups a little later.”
“Make sure you do. We need all the hands we can get.” He gave me a little salute and took off down the road again.
MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Page 42